evileeyore
member, 605 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Joined 20150819
Wed 8 Dec 2021
at 22:19 | Language feature: "Known Word"This just popped up today in one the games I'm in that uses the Language Groups feature, one of the words in a language my Character speaks (so the whole posts is intelligible to me) was under dotted underlines and mouse-over text said "Known Word". Is this a new or old) feature of the Language Groups?
Or is Chrome (my browser) doing weird things?
Reference image:
https://i.imgur.com/URiQNAL.jpg
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SunRuanEr
subscriber, 429 posts
Wed 8 Dec 2021
at 23:35 | Language feature: "Known Word"That's...definitely not something I've ever seen before. o.O
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Chernobyl
supporter, 167 posts
Area of desolate waste,
Mutation Central.
Thu 9 Dec 2021
at 01:36 | Language feature: "Known Word"I honestly thought it was something like grammarly with a word that had to be manually added to a "known word" pool.
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evileeyore
member, 608 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Joined 20150819
Thu 9 Dec 2021
at 02:24 | Language feature: "Known Word"| Chernobyl: | | I honestly thought it was something like grammarly with a word that had to be manually added to a "known word" pool. |
I don't run anything like that. I have few scripting addons for Chrome that stop scripts and adds from running, but nothing like Grammarly.
Huh, Hang on... [10 seconds later] ... okay, I do have the Chrome Offline docs editor... let me turn that off, reload Chrome and see what happens. In fact, I'll turn off everything back down to base Chrome (shudder) and see what's what.
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evileeyore
member, 609 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Joined 20150819
Thu 9 Dec 2021
at 02:32 | Language feature: "Known Word"| evileeyore: | | In fact, I'll turn off everything back down to base Chrome (shudder) and see what's what. |
Stripped to base Chrome, it was unchanged. Same thing in Firefox.
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Skald
moderator, 946 posts
Whatever it is,
I'm against it
Thu 9 Dec 2021
at 12:45 | Language feature: "Known Word"I think you'll find that's not a Chrome issue ... you're probably looking at one of the private to language group syntax features.
There are two instances where the language won't get garbled, which equates to known word:
- the word is the name of a PC (you'd be expected to recognise the name 'Marvin the Magnficient' in a sentence even if you didn't have a clue what the rest of it was about)
- the word is enclosed in curly brackets to force it to show as typed eg {Tanelorn} (allowing the GM to override the scrambling for any other word, most commonly NPC names, city names etc)
One side-effect is that if a player has a name such as Marvin the Magnificent (Kermit the Frog, Attila the Hun etc) with a 'the' in there, any instance of 'the' won't be garbled.
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evileeyore
member, 610 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Joined 20150819
Thu 9 Dec 2021
at 16:03 | Language feature: "Known Word"| Skald: | I think you'll find that's not a Chrome issue ... you're probably looking at one of the private to language group syntax features.
There are two instances where the language won't get garbled, which equates to known word:
- the word is the name of a PC (you'd be expected to recognise the name 'Marvin the Magnficient' in a sentence even if you didn't have a clue what the rest of it was about)
- the word is enclosed in curly brackets to force it to show as typed eg {Tanelorn} (allowing the GM to override the scrambling for any other word, most commonly NPC names, city names etc)
One side-effect is that if a player has a name such as Marvin the Magnificent (Kermit the Frog, Attila the Hun etc) with a 'the' in there, any instance of 'the' won't be garbled. |
That is exactly what is happening. Okay, that explains it, we have a "character" (NPC group mostly) that has Spearhead in it's name.
Are there more rules to using Languages? And where is that bit about shifted brackets? None of that is in the FAQ, Help pages, or on the GM screen explaining how Language Groups work.
'Cause I've been doing the hard formatting when I could have just used curly brackets...
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gorchek
member, 50 posts
Thu 9 Dec 2021
at 16:52 | Language feature: "Known Word"It's in the "RuBB Code Tips & Tricks" section, "Private Lines to Group (Language Group)" subsection, in the "Special Syntax" entry.
And the only reason I found that, is because someone quoted it somewhere else in the forum and Google was able to find it.
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evileeyore
member, 612 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Joined 20150819
Thu 9 Dec 2021
at 17:30 | Language feature: "Known Word"| gorchek: | It's in the "RuBB Code Tips & Tricks" section, "Private Lines to Group (Language Group)" subsection, in the "Special Syntax" entry.
And the only reason I found that, is because someone quoted it somewhere else in the forum and Google was able to find it. |
Ah... it's not in that section on the Responsive Site. *sigh* And even the non-Responsive FAQ doesn't mention the Known Word function.
Thanks for the pointer.
I wonder if this section or feature is getting a change so it was removed from the FAQ?
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Skald
moderator, 947 posts
Whatever it is,
I'm against it
Fri 10 Dec 2021
at 05:18 | Language feature: "Known Word"Oddly enough, I can't get it to display the 'Known Word' message on mouse hover on the old non-Responsive site, but I can on Responsive ...
evileeyore - can you check for me on the old non-Responsive site and see if it'll show 'Known Word' for you or not ? Want to confirm it doesn't show for you either.
I'm guessing 1) that 'Known Word' message is a tweak jase did for the Responsive update, and 2) that the FAQ page for Private Lines on the Responsive site predates the last update to that FAQ on the old non-Responsive site ... but I can fix that, once we confirm the 'Known Word' issue. :>
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evileeyore
member, 613 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Joined 20150819
Fri 10 Dec 2021
at 05:52 | Language feature: "Known Word"| Skald: | | evileeyore - can you check for me on the old non-Responsive site and see if it'll show 'Known Word' for you or not ? Want to confirm it doesn't show for you either. |
The word is underlined, just as it is on Responsive, but "Private Message" is the mouseover text.
On Responsive, the rest of the Language Group message displays "Private Message", except for the underlined word, which displays "Known Word".
Curly brackets work identically to the "Known Word" feature on both versions of the site (that is, underlined on both sites, but only listed as a "Known Word" on Responsive, "Private Message" on non-Responsive), and you might want to mention in the FAQ you can only curly bracket one word at a time, trying to bracket two words fails.
| quote: | | I'm guessing 1) that 'Known Word' message is a tweak jase did for the Responsive update, and 2) that the FAQ page for Private Lines on the Responsive site predates the last update to that FAQ on the old non-Responsive site ... but I can fix that, once we confirm the 'Known Word' issue. :> |
/thumbsup.jpg
We might want to talk him into tweaking it back... because the word for "bob" in Russian ('bob' one's head, 'bob' up and down, etc) is radically different than "Bob" the name. Or at least refining it to only capitalized words.
(My preference is to remove it, it's not hard to use curly brackets around proper nouns after all.)
This message was last edited by the user at 05:53, Fri 10 Dec 2021.
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Skald
moderator, 948 posts
Whatever it is,
I'm against it
Fri 10 Dec 2021
at 06:24 | Language feature: "Known Word"I think the only tweak was to identify the underlined text as 'Known Word' on mouse hover, instead of the generic 'Private Message' - the functionality shouldn't otherwise have changed.
Thanks for the tip about it being one word at a time ! That I did not know, though I have subsequently found it in an explanatory note jase posted way back when. :>
And I know what you mean about the name "Bob" not being the same as the verb "to bob", but that's an endemic issue with languages generally - you'd have a similar problem with the French we go = "nous allons" which might cause a character called Alan to worry a lot if he heard that as "noose Alan" ! <grins> But that's a discussion for another time and place (any changes to functionality would need to be proposed in the RPoL Development forum).
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Skald
moderator, 949 posts
Whatever it is,
I'm against it
Fri 10 Dec 2021
at 06:44 | Language feature: "Known Word"Hokay ... the Private Lines FAQ should now be fixed on both Responsive and old non-Responsive sites. :>
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evileeyore
member, 645 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Joined 20150819
Thu 10 Feb 2022
at 00:33 | Language feature: "Known Word"Might want to note that Punctuation (aside from single Apostrophe) and diacritical letter replacements are also disallowed from working within the "Known Word" (the curly brackets) function.
Side question, does this mean they are also disallowed in Character Naming conventions (Punctuation that is)?
And I answered it myself, Exclamation Points, Commas, Periods, and Apostrophes are allowed, Question Marks and Quotation Marks are not allowed in Character names.
Mmmmmm, now I want to know if the Known Name function will automagically register a Known Name used in a Private Language if it has Exclamation Points, Periods, or Commas in it.
And tested. Apostrophes are fine. No other punctuation can be used in a Character name nor can Numbers if you want them to work properly with the "Known Words" function of Private Language Groups, however numbers and the above mentioned punctuation can be used in CHaracter names.
For instance the Character name "Glorious Number 1" would have 'Glorious' and 'Number' register as Known Words, but not '1'.
Note to the last line, names with numbers within them work just fine, frex xXEdge1LordXx is perfectly workable Character name as far as the Known Words function is concerned. It's just numbers off by themselves that will be ignored.
Also while the following sentence "I will vanquish thee Skald!" if done in a Language Group would recognize 'Skald' aside from the Exclamation Point, if the Character name was "Skald!" the Known Word function ignores it, so, I think I've just uncovered a new test... hang on, back to the white room...
Okay, Numbers are the outlier as far as that goes, disallowed/invalid Punctuation is still disallowed/invalid even if contained within the name.
And now we all know...
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Skald
moderator, 959 posts
Whatever it is,
I'm against it
Fri 11 Feb 2022
at 06:10 | Language feature: "Known Word"I'm of a different mindset on the numbers issue - while I appreciate the overlap with character names, IMNSHO numbers on their lonesomes shouldn't be considered Known Words. :>
While all the European languages I've studied use the same characters to represent cardinal numbers - 1, 2, 3 etc (I'm not prepared to guess with any other languagues, just commenting on the ones I know) ... they all use different "number words" e.g. one, two, three; un, deux, trois; uno, dos, tres; uno, due, tre; eins, zwei, drei. So 1 is in fact not the same when spoken/heard in different languages ... you don't hear "1", you hear "one" or "un" etc.
Written might be a different proposition ... though convention has it that you use the number word for 1-9 in writing, and to be fair, if your character is looking at that piece of faded parchement and can discern that there are "4,813 khjities", the number itself is not particularly helpful - the character REALLY needs to know if khjities are copper pieces or undead - the former probably not very interesting, the latter a key piece of information if they want to survive to discuss the matter with learned sages.
In the matter of diacritical letter replacements ... I'm currently formulating an opinion. :P I'm wondering if the addition of the diacritic would render the character an unknown in a language that doesn't have it natively (ie except in imported words)? I'm also taking into consideration that our language handler is based on characters not phonetics.
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evileeyore
member, 646 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Joined 20150819
Fri 11 Feb 2022
at 07:31 | Language feature: "Known Word"| Skald: | | I'm of a different mindset on the numbers issue - while I appreciate the overlap with character names, IMNSHO numbers on their lonesomes shouldn't be considered Known Words. :> |
Just pointing things out I discovered while fiddling with the Known Words function after I had it fail on me because I was accidentally including an Exclamation point with a name (it was at the end of a sentence). And it took my like ten minutes of head scratching to figure out why the function was failing... so I then dove in to see what else would break the function (both using curly braces and the "automagical known word generated from the cast list).
| quote: | | Written might be a different proposition ... though convention has it that you use the number word for 1-9 in writing, and to be fair, if your character is looking at that piece of faded parchement and can discern that there are "4,813 khjities", the number itself is not particularly helpful - the character REALLY needs to know if khjities are copper pieces or undead - the former probably not very interesting, the latter a key piece of information if they want to survive to discuss the matter with learned sages. |
I just see it as weird that a Cast Name with a solo numeral in it can't render the numeral automagically, but words like 'the' or 'Captain' will, despite neither being a name, just because they might appear in the cast list as part of, or as a, Character name.
| quote: | | In the matter of diacritical letter replacements ... I'm currently formulating an opinion. :P |
Oh, I've already formed one. It includes Punctuation too. My opinion goes, "if it's inside the curlies, it should be rendered as known".
Or, just do away with automagically rendering Known Words to save on those weird edge cases like Major, Leftenant, Captain, all being titles in a Character...
This message was last edited by the user at 13:44, Sat 12 Feb 2022.
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Skald
moderator, 960 posts
Whatever it is,
I'm against it
Sat 12 Feb 2022
at 05:24 | Language feature: "Known Word"Addenum: my wife subsequently pointed out that Latin would use Roman numerals I, II, III, IV instead of 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. :>
I don't have a problem with Captain, Major etc (even "the") as part of a character name auto-rendering as Known Words - while we might recognise those terms as ranks, someone (ie a Character) who wasn't familiar with ranks/titles etc would just assume that was the given name - it's just a word, so whether it's Captain Blackadder or Edmund Blackadder, it just identifies that particular person. For all the character knows, his first name is "Captain".
Yes, whenever Captain comes up it'll be translated, but you have the same problem with other words - Reverend Green (picking one of the suspects from Cluedo) would render both Reverend and Green throughout. At that point it comes down to players separating Player from Character knowledge (ie player knows the term, character doesn't).
Same principle as when you have two characters, one of whom speaks Elvish, the other who doesn't - the Player is going to see the translation on behalf of whichever character does speak Elvish and has to pretend that the one who doesn't didn't understand a thing.
But I quite agree that anything inside the curly brackets should be shown "as is" - please go ahead and put up a post in RPoL Development to bring that to jase's attention so it gets on the list. :>
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evileeyore
member, 647 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Joined 20150819
Sat 12 Feb 2022
at 14:21 | Language feature: "Known Word"| Skald: | | I don't have a problem with Captain, Major etc (even "the") as part of a character name auto-rendering as Known Words - while we might recognise those terms as ranks, someone (ie a Character) who wasn't familiar with ranks/titles etc would just assume that was the given name... |
That isn't the way languages in the real world operate, just because your title is Captain, doesn't mean you, and everyone who knows you title can recognize it in every language that exists...
Frex Captain Jack Sparrow, that's his name in English, but if an Indonesian pirate were shouting at his captain in Indonesian, "Captain, we have something strange off port bow!" it should not be "translating" as "Captain, xf ibwf tpnfuijoh tusbohf pgg qpsu cpx!" just as an example.
The Character's names could be Red, Blue, Sword, Pike, Mountain, Five, River, Gorge, etc... yes, if someone is saying their names it should be their name, not gobbledygooked, but if foreign dude is saying "Take the red sword up the blue mountain past five pike river gorge..." in his strange foreign language, the 'whole sentence' should not be coming across in English...
And this would become exacerbated if the GM has as many NPCs as I've got in one of my games, like it's possible the Known Words list could be several thousand words...
| quote: | | At that point it comes down to players separating Player from Character knowledge (ie player knows the term, character doesn't). |
Or just drop the 'feature', which is acting more like a documented bug every time I think about it, and leave it to the curly braces. In the one game I've got that uses the Language Groups I just curly brace names as I go now, because most of the NPCs aren't in the cast page and it's easier than trying to remember which ones are.
| quote: | | Same principle as when you have two characters, one of whom speaks Elvish, the other who doesn't - the Player is going to see the translation on behalf of whichever character does speak Elvish and has to pretend that the one who doesn't didn't understand a thing. |
That's separate issue and not as easily "fixed". But someday... yes someday... with the right implanted chips we could fracture the human psyche and force Player knowledge separation... no wait, that's unethical. [/joke]
| quote: | | But I quite agree that anything inside the curly brackets should be shown "as is" - please go ahead and put up a post in RPoL Development to bring that to jase's attention so it gets on the list. |
Yeah, I'll be doing that at some point today.
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Skald
moderator, 961 posts
Whatever it is,
I'm against it
Sun 13 Feb 2022
at 04:45 | Language feature: "Known Word"| evileeyore: | That isn't the way languages in the real world operate, just because your title is Captain, doesn't mean you, and everyone who knows you title can recognize it in every language that exists...
Frex Captain Jack Sparrow, that's his name in English, but if an Indonesian pirate were shouting at his captain in Indonesian, "Captain, we have something strange off port bow!" it should not be "translating" as "Captain, xf ibwf tpnfuijoh tusbohf pgg qpsu cpx!" just as an example. |
I don't think I explained my point correctly ... I was trying to argue that the listener wouldn't know that "Captain" was a title - they'd recognise it as a word, ostensibly a name. EG to my mind there's no difference to the instance where the character recognised "Jack" whenever it came up. He only knows "Jack" because he knows the person, and, assuming he didn't know what the title meant from context, would only know "Captain" for the same reason.
Though to be fair, if our pirate yelled "Jack, we have something strange off port bow!", the gentleman in question would mutter the obligatory "There should be a 'Captain' in there somewhere." <grrins>
THAT said, I do appreciate and agree with your point that due to the way language handling works (obfuscating, not translating) - we are in fact effectively getting the translation of "Captain" (and any other word that's in a character name) in whatever language it appears in, and bug or not, to my mind that's not desireable ... and removing the auto-known functionality and leaving it all to curly brackets would seem a nice and easy fix (though the GM of the game with all those NPCs might not thank us). ;>
I'm off to RPoL Development to give my +1.
| evileeyore: | | no wait, that's unethical |
Depends on your alignment ... ;P
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evileeyore
member, 651 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Joined 20150819
Sun 13 Feb 2022
at 05:49 | Language feature: "Known Word"| Skald: | | Depends on your alignment ... ;P |
Vertical roughly 75% of the day, horizontal the other 25%.
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